“Yeah.”
“Is there a problem? He normally rings me if there’s anything we need to talk about, but I thought all the legal stuff was done and dusted.”
“No, no problem.” He musters another smile full of unnaturally white teeth. “More of a favor, really. My family, we’ve been sorting through all the stuff from the house move, going through it all, and obviously a lot of it isn’t worth keeping. I mean, a lot of it will just end up in the dumpster because it’s so old.”
“Oh,” I say, finally making the connection. “Right. Mr. Hopkins is your… grandad?”
“Yeah.” He nods emphatically. “Sorry. This was his house. You know, before.”
“I see.”
“You’re Adam, right?” He takes a half-step nearer. “So, we’ve been going through all the stuff cleared out of the house, andmost of it’s junk, like I said, but there’s a few things that we can’t find. Family things with sentimental value, mementos and such like. Things that belonged to my grandpa.” He glances over my shoulder, at the house behind me. “And the thing is… if it’s not too much trouble, we’d like them back.”
20
Shaun stands his ground, one thumb looped beneath the strap of his rucksack.
“Would that be OK?” he says. “To get my grandpa’s stuff back?”
I reach for my front door key. “Is this about the text message?”
“What message?”
“My wife had a text asking if we could send anything we found to a PO box address.”
He shakes his head slowly, his mouth turning down briefly at the corners.
“No, that’s… I don’t know anything about that.”
I stare at him for a moment, watching for any signs of deceit. Any flicker of nerves in his deep-set eyes. But either he’s a very good actor or he genuinely doesn’t know what I’m talking about.
“Strange,” I say. “Assumed that was why you were here.”
“No one’s sent any texts, that I’m aware of.”
He continues to stand there, not fazed by my questions, apparently willing to keep on chatting until I let him in. There is no offer tocome back at another time, orlet me ask my dad about that text. He stands quite still, feet planted shoulder-width apart, neither advancing nor retreating. My first instinct—as soon as I’d seen him staring in the front window—had been to send him on his way. With the discovery of the cameras, the weird messageJess had received, the strange story I’d heard today from Maxine Parish, I wasn’t about to trust the word of a total stranger.
And yet…
I didn’t want him to leave either—not until I knew who he really was. And for all I knew, he could be telling the truth. Maybe hewasMr. Hopkins senior’s grandson. Which would mean whoever sent the text message was someone else entirely—and they had no right to anything in our house.
“So,” I say, “you came by because your dad’s abroad, is that it?”
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s right.”
“Sorry, I didn’t catch your surname.”
“Hopkins,” he says. “Nice to meet you, by the way.”
I give him a tight smile as an idea forms in my head.
“Listen,” I say, “can you just give me a second? Need to make sure the kitchen door’s shut otherwise the dog will make a run for it.”
He nods, without taking his eyes off me. “Sure.”
I unlock the front door and step into the hall. With my back to the visitor, I pull out my phone and fire off a text to Jeremy, the vendor’s estate agent, who had sold the house on Mr. Hopkins’s behalf.
Hi did you speak to Mr. H son/grandson today about him coming to the house?
